The elder's eyes widened fractionally—the first show of surprise from any of the ashen elves. "I can tell that you have been touched by chaos," he said, reaching out a long-fingered hand that stopped just short of touching Jolthar's chest.
"And quite deeply too. And yet you are still standing."
"Even the man that informed of you of his place, had died wielding that power. What is your purpose, coming here? To trespass on our lands like it's your own?"
The elder's assessment was spoken with unmistakable wonder.
In all his centuries, perhaps he had never seen a human vessel contain such chaos power without fracturing. Most humans who touched chaos energies were consumed by them, their minds shattered, their bodies transformed into abominations.
"I came to seek just for the same reason my ancestor did. I need your help," Jolthar told him. It was truth. There was no use in beating around. If he wants them to teach him, then he has to be sincere in his attempts and start by telling the truth.
"What makes you think that we will help you? You do know that we sent back that man when he came asking for our help. He was a greedy man and wanted to eat more than he could chew."
Jolthar raised an eyebrow. He didn't know much about Mad Sovereign. He just read about him being the strongest being in the midlands in his prime and his sword teachings and the parts where he learned from his grandmother. Other than that, he doesn't know about him.
"Frankly speaking, I am not aware of what kind of person he was. And just because I have the same blood as him doesn't mean I am the same as him," Jolthar said, shrugging his shoulders.
Elder talked in human tongue, and so the rest of the members are not able to understand what Jolthar and the elder were talking about.
The elder looked at Jolthar for a minute, studying him. He could tell Jolthar wielded a power equivalent to chaos, and no matter how much he probed, he couldn't find what it was.
"Summon your chaos for me, boy," the elder commanded, stepping back to give Jolthar space. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ N0velFire.ɴet
Jolthar hesitated only briefly.
This was why he had come, after all—to understand the power that flowed through his veins. Voidwrath, the beast king's power and the blue aura – he got them along the way; he made the power obey his will, but this chaos was too hard to control.
But the chaos... that was something else entirely.
He raised his hand slowly, palm upward.
The bindings around his wrists were no impediment to this particular power. He closed his eyes, reaching inward to the well of energy that pulsed at his core. Not the familiar silver of his voidwrath or the primal green of the beast king's essence, but something different—something that felt both foreign and intimately part of him.
He had grown accustomed to the chaos that he no longer needed the sword to summon the chaos.
When he opened his eyes, a flame of pure violet energy danced above his palm.
Loud gasps and murmurs of awe rose in the gathering. They were completely taken aback by the level of control and the amount of chaos Jolthar wielded.
Even their most skilled warrior would take a century to garner that amount of chaos, but Jolthar seemed like an infant in front of them, and yet he had this much chaos in him.
Meanwhile, Jolthar was still stretching his hand, holding the chaos in his hand. It wasn't hot—not in the conventional sense—but every elf in the vicinity could feel the reality-warping properties it contained. The chaos flame twisted and turned, sometimes looking solid, sometimes liquid, defying the natural laws that governed ordinary matter.
A collective gasp rose from the gathered elves.
They had expected perhaps a spark, a flicker—evidence of a human barely touched by chaos energies. Not this controlled manifestation that Jolthar held effortlessly in his open palm.
"Impossible," one elf whispered.
The elder silenced them with a sharp gesture, his eyes never leaving the violet flame. "Enough," he commanded.
Then, to Jolthar: "Alright, come with me." He said after staring at the violet flame for a few seconds.
Before they could move, a younger elf stepped forward from the crowd. The familial resemblance was unmistakable—the same prominent cheekbones, the same set to his jaw, though lacking the weathering of centuries.
"Father!" an elf, he seemed older than twenties, protested, "you can't let him in. He is a human."
The elder turned slowly to face his son.
He said nothing, but the weight of his gaze was enough to make the younger elf step back into the crowd.
No one, it seemed, raised their voice against the elder twice.
It was how much they respected their elder, the leader of this elf community. And his decision was final.
"Follow," the elder said to Jolthar, already walking toward a structure at the far end of the settlement—a building that seemed to be part crystal, part living wood, and part something Jolthar couldn't identify.
As they walked, Jolthar extinguished the chaos flame with a thought, though he could feel it still, pulsing within him like a second heartbeat.
The elder led him past the suspicious stares of the ashen elves, through a series of archways formed by trees that had grown together at impossible angles.
As he got closer to the structure, he could see it was a massive tower-like building, with trees and vines wrapped around the structure.
The pathway to the structure was lit by the torch on either side, and there were steps carved into stone. Jolthar could guess that it was some sort of temple.
The sanctuary they entered defied human architecture. The ceiling soared upward, opening to the sky in places, while remaining perfectly sealed in others. The walls seemed to breathe with a subtle rhythm, and the floor beneath his feet felt simultaneously solid and yielding. The entire floor was a white marble, and the walls were covered the wooden statues.